Considering this is my third or fourth time reading Iron Sunrise, it should come as no surprise that I like it. Iron Sunrise is a science fiction thriller space opera lingering within certain degrees of believability. There are two main characters. One of them was apparently in the previous Eschaton story, Singularity Sky.

Rachel Mansour is Black Ops, i.e. top-secret with/without wet-work (e.g. killing people). I’ve never figured out why politicians, academics and the military use so many substitute words in an attempt to camouflage what a soldier often has to do. Although, in the case of politicians, in real life and in Iron Sunrise, I expect it has to do with living in pretend worlds inside their own heads. Pretenses and pretty words do nothing to save people like Rachel from having recurring nightmares. She is the kind of person, who instead of asking “Why should I do this?” or “Why is this happening to me?” asks “Why not me?”. She is who the UN sends out to clean up their or other worlds’ messes. In the first part of Iron Sunrise, Rachel has a nasty encounter with Emperor Idi Amin. She manages to save Geneva from him. After that, she is sent off to save humans from themselves.

One of the people who experienced the start of the mess Rachel is trying to fix is our other main character, Wednesday Strowger. The first few pages are about her experiences three years earlier when her invisible friend, Herman, asked for her help.

She’d read the papers in the strong room, realized how important they must be, and pushed the door ajar, thinking to leave – yanked it shut barely ahead of the snarl and the leap. Acrid smoke had curled up from the hinges as she scrambled into the duct-work, fled like a black-clad spider into the service axis and though the pressurized cargo tunnel and the shadows of the almost-empty dock, panting and crying as she went. Always hearing a scrabble of diamond-tipped claws on the floor behind her.

After the evacuation of Old Newfoundland Four, we next meet Wednesday three years later. She is now 19 has people out to kill her. Wednesday ties them to her past. Again, with the help of Herman, she jumps, once more, into the fray. That jump eventually brings her into contact with Rachel.

Another person sent by her government to clean up after other people’s stupidity is U. Portia Hoechst. Same thing, only she belongs to the other side, the enemy to Wednesday and Rachel’s beliefs about right and wrong. Portia is as convinced of the need for the ReMastered as Rachel believes in the need for Eschaton. Two people, each trying to bring the galaxy back into their kind of order. Take what it may. Already, Wednesday’s home-world, Moscow and her second home on Old NewFoundland have been destroyed or made uninhabitable for humans. Once more, Wednesday and millions of other people stand to lose their lives.

I’m on Wednesday and Rachel’s side, but that is because Stross has written the story with them made out to be the quasi-goodies. Yet I can see the attraction of a tyranny run the way the ReMastered do. Only if I was considered one of the usable ones. The only good tyrannies, in my mind, are ones with leaders who put the needs of their people before their own wants. Yeah, not likely.

There are some technologies that Stross describes that I wouldn’t mind. Smart pigments for hair and skin could be incredibly fun to play with. But not really practical unless you’re trying to camouflage yourself. I’m not sure about brain implants (basically a smarter brain) because the concept seems too easy to hack. Plus they seem kind of clunky. Plus I’m not sure which parts of the brain they would be hacked into. Our brains are only electrical impulses traveling along a fragile network easily disrupted by neurochemical signals. I imagine our calorie intake would have to increase to make up for the extra energy requirements of a global implant such as Stross describes. Cause we would have to be able to energize these networks by ourselves, the way we do with our meat brains. Which is why I’m not buying all the “hard science fiction” labels that Iron Sunrise has gotten. Not when it comes to Eschaton either.

Faster than light travel, wormholes, null spaces or even almost up to light travel are never going to happen for humans. We are too stupid to come together as a planet for long enough to get it done. Hell, we’re too stupid to make our own planet more environmentally sound. Even me, and I know what is going on. But that doesn’t make this stuff any less fun to read about. Iron Sunrise is an excellent thriller that is already, more or less, happening here on Earth. This is how stupid people are. And how dedicated. And how terrified yet willing. And how terrifying. And how greedy. Greed. Ain’t it wonderful. Where would thrillers be without it or fanaticism.

If ever an Artificial Intelligence comes about that is somewhat like Eschaton, it deserves a UN citizenship.

Once again we enter the world of master-sleuth and journalist Jack Emery. Believe it or not, there are people out there who are against world peace. In and of itself that is not a problem. However, when that person has a powerful organization backing them up, the world is in danger. A prime real-life example is Dick Cheney and his connections with the weapons’ industry. Power-hunger seeps into the pores of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Administrator, Richard Hall, and his fanaticism drives USA towards another chasm.

The world needs people like Jack Emery, who, with the right motivation and co-conspirators, does not give up until a truth is found. And, that my friend, is something State of Emergency gives him.

The story starts off with Iranian computer scientist student, Dhaneshgahi, being kidnapped off MIT grounds. Already, we know that the target is in a heap of trouble, that the crime involves cracking and that the target is difficult.

The entire population of the US definitely qualifies as a difficult target, with the main perpetrator acting as “a friend in need”. Through his naughtiness, Richard Hall will, finally, experience the kind of USA he has longed to see. One that is much more controlled. A dusin apparent terrorist attacks have been pulled off. The National Security Council has no idea who is behind the attacks. Nor do they know how to defend against them. How do you defend against an enemy who has no name or known agenda? Richard Hall, through FEMA, suggests to the President that FEMA could use State Guards to protect vulnerable targets and ramp up general FEMA support. She tells him to make it happen. Finally, Hall has his foot inside the tower of power.

Richard Hall does well as a serial killer. He is driven by an inner mania to get his philosophy into life, cost what it may. According to him, the ends do justify the means. Cue crazy person laugh. Except in Richard Hall’s mind he is the only logical person around. And that may be correct. Where logic leads you depends on your starting point. His starting point is that control and punishment are the only tools through which the United States might return to greatness.

The system controlling the capacity and flow at the Hoover Dam is broken into, and “unprecedented flooding” follows. Jack Emery becomes curious. Curiosity in a journalist can be a dangerous thing if that journalist has freedom and connections to dig below surface facts. Saving the US in Foundation made Jack connections that got him into unusual places. Like the Hoover Dam after the break-in. The terrorists had not been able to cut the hard-wired security camera feeds. Jack and his buddy Joseph got to see the entire break-in and wondered about the team’s easy entry. From small mistakes the powerful may fall. And fall they do, all in usual Jack Emery style.

Break-ins, break-outs, invasions, battles, shortages, concentration camps, death on both sides, rebels, underground radios, explosions, moments of high tension and romantic entanglements all come together to form a fun and addictiveState of Emergency. Definitely recommended.

Santa is Dead

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No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.